"Android and iPhone users [...] will also experience BlackBerry's ad content in the form of mobile takeovers starting the week of March 25. Those mobile takeovers will fill your screen with what looks like a BlackBerry 10's, demoing a specific feature like its photo 'Time Shift' capability that allows you to scroll through several captured options for each face in a picture." Yes. BlackBerry is going to run ads that hijack your entire smartphone's display. Sigh.

Also, repeat after me: ads are good. Why? Because they allow site owners to offer you ungrateful SOBs quality content for free.

Source: I run some sites that were doing really well before the recession solely on advertising money and I hired a lot of talented people to write for them. When the advertising market crashed hard in my country in 2009 I was forced to lay off a lot of people and close said websites.

Hope you like your paywalls, because that's where all this is heading.

Hope you like your paywalls, because that's where all this is heading.

I don't much mind, to be honest, so long as the content is good and the price is fair. Better than serving me ads from a third party server that I did not wish to access especially if I have no real idea what's actually being downloaded until it appears. The number of malware infections I've seen from supposedly legitimate ad services (mostly flash, but some js or Java exploits too) might surprise you. If paywalls are what it takes to get rid of this shit, so be it especially when you also factor in the skyrocketing data caps and corresponding plans. These goddamn full image ads already hog enough of our already limited mobile bandwidth even when you don't click on the bloody things, and a hell of a lot of home ISPs are beginning to institute caps as well.

So when developers go the extra mile to make an app free upfront, other monetization strategies must be used.

Well, that's probably why all the top Android games are about collecting coins to unlock power-ups that help you collect more coins to unlock even more expensive power-ups etc ... that is until you crack and just pay for the god damned coins.